08/30/2026
Turns out there’s a whole lot that happens between pasture and plate.
Last week, Robbie and Pete had the opportunity to represent Wooly Bully Sheep Ranch at the NC Choices Summit - Ensuring Quality from Pasture to Plate: A Meat Quality & Marketing Training, presented by NC Choices and NC Cooperative Extension.
And this wasn’t exactly a sit-in-a-room-and-watch-PowerPoints kind of event.
Day One got us out in the field. We toured two working farms, visited an independent meat processing facility, and watched hands-on carcass breakdown demonstrations of both a hog and a lamb. Seeing different production systems and business models firsthand gave us plenty to think about for our own operation.
Day Two brought everything together in the classroom, and one of the biggest takeaways was just how early meat quality actually begins.
It doesn’t start at the processor. It doesn’t even start when we decide an animal is ready for harvest. It starts with genetics, breeding decisions, nutrition, animal health, and management - sometimes before that lamb is even born. From there, every decision matters: nutrition, low-stress handling, health practices, record keeping, processing, refrigeration, packaging, and ultimately understanding what the person buying that product actually values.
One concept that really stuck with us was: You can’t “finish” quality into an animal if you didn’t build the foundation for it first.
That has us thinking even more carefully about how we continue improving our flock. Bigger and faster-growing animals may produce more pounds of product, but bigger isn’t automatically better. Growth, nutrition, cost, meat quality, and customer preference all have to work together.
That’s the target. Not simply pounds of lamb. Quality lamb on the plate.
The summit was also an excellent opportunity to connect with other producers, processors, Extension professionals, researchers, and agricultural organizations. Some of the best learning happens simply by comparing notes, hearing how others solve problems, and discovering resources we didn’t know were available.
We came home with new contacts, new ideas, and plenty to think about - from flock genetics and nutrition to record keeping, inventory management, customer education, marketing, and future online sales.
And somehow, after two full days of professional development, Robbie and Pete came home with more work to do than when they left. Apparently, that’s what learning looks like in agriculture.
A big thank you to NC Choices, NC Cooperative Extension, the presenters, host farms, processors, and everyone who shared their knowledge and experience.
Pasture to plate isn’t just a catchy phrase...every decision along the way ends up on somebody’s dinner table.
